The past few months have seen a series of critical assessments of behaviour at the top of organisations, from RBS, HBOS and AIG, through to the National Health Service, social work departments and even members of parliament. At the heart of these issues sits the thorny question of accountability. How do you make someone accountable? How does the search for accountability become associated with looking for someone to blame, and how can you create a culture where ownership of an organisation's goals drives behaviour?
Accountability is in itself an interesting concept - one that in public life seems to be rapidly disappearing and one that is repeatedly refuted in general behaviour as people look to blame others for misfortunes of their own making. Nothing illustrates this better than the rise of no-win, no-fee lawyers whose advertising is aimed at encouraging a culture where we are no longer accountable for ourselves, a culture where others can be made accountable for us.
I have argued before that an era of permanent childhood is descending upon us with the private sector encouraging us to abdicate any responsibility we may feel for ourselves, and policy-makers creating legislation that transfers responsibility from the individual to organisations, be they employers or providers of products or services.
What fascinates me about this issue is the emerging consequences for UK plc. If someone is unwilling to take responsibility and to be held accountable for what they do then inevitably they will become increasingly risk-averse. This must begin to depress our willingness to innovate, impacting our competitiveness in the global marketplace in the longer-term
We are also seeing a demand for greater compensation for specific increases in accountabilities - often of a small and insignificant nature - that build in less flexibility and reduce overall productivity, again impacting on longer-term competitiveness. We will never re-establish a sound economy unless we are willing to innovate and drive more flexibility in labour markets.
We are sleep-walking into a social disaster and we need to take action now. It may be too late and, like King Canute, we may get wet feet, but to get soaked without trying to stop it would be a demonstration that we are not prepared to take accountability for putting right what is wrong in UK organisations today.
To drive this change we have to think hard about how to address this without building a blame culture. Here we face a conundrum - how to challenge a refusal to be accountable without it turning into a witch hunt. When we as leaders keep pressing to understand why something in our own organisation went wrong and what we need to do to stop it happening again, we find some who deflect the process assuming that it is about blame. However, without an acceptance of responsibility and reflection on what went wrong and why, no one will ever learn and nothing will ever change for the better.
We are going to have to go back to basics to sort this out. We need well-defined objectives with measurable outcomes, a clear understanding about who is accountable for what in our processes and of what we are trying to do and why. In no organisation I have ever worked has anyone been fired for a genuine mistake; they have had to go for being dishonest, for covering up, for blaming others, but a mistake, admitted and dealt with has never been a reason for demanding a departure.
Accountability is the acceptance of responsibility and the refusal to blame others. This reminds me of another significant point. If leaders behave like this so will those they lead. If they don't, then they can't expect others to behave differently. This is something those in public life (CEOs, politicians, heads of public services and the like) might like to take to heart.
Chris Bones is dean of Henley Business School, chris.bones@haymarket.com
